Scrubs – Season 9 Details: Hospital and Med School Settings

We finally know more about what they’re going to be doing to change the format of Scrubs for the ninth season. I have to admit being slightly worried about the shift in the show, but now I am excited by the prospects that this new format brings to the show. It’ll be interesting to see the show’s new format, and now that we know what the setting will be, I will rest a lot easier about it. And I look forward to future announcements.

This just seems like the right move for the show, and almost like a naturally planned transition for the cast of the show as well as the story. They’ve told the story of an intern rising through the ranks over eight years, and now it’s time for a new story.

When the show returns next winter, the action will shift from the hospital to the classroom and make med-school professors of John C. McGinley’s Dr. Cox and Donald Faison’s Turk.

“It’ll be a lot like Paper Chase as a comedy,” Lawrence tells me. “It’s going to be a different show. It’ll still be life-and-death stakes, but if the show is just Scrubs again in the hospital with a different person’s voiceover, it would be a disaster and people would be mad.”

Of course, Sacred Heart won’t go away altogether. Although J.D.’s old stomping ground no longer will serve as the show’s base of operations, the students will occasionally rotate through its halls — and bump into many of its familiar faces. In addition to McGinley and Faison, both of whom are expected to be full-time regulars alongside a quartet of newbies (most of them playing students), Scrubs vets Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes and Ken Jenkins have agreed to make guest appearances. (Neil Flynn has a costarring role as Patricia Heaton’s husband in the new ABC sitcom The Middle, so his name-challenged Janitor will be MIA.)

“Med students in their first three years have to spend anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of their time at a hospital,” Lawrence explains. “And that’s when you’ll see some of the [original cast members]. Continuity-wise, Sacred Heart will still exist with those people still working there.”

But Lawrence insists “half the cast, if not 60 percent of it,” will be comprised of freshmen, one of which will be more recognizable than the rest. “[ABC] is really after us to hire a big name,” he reveals. “So one of them will be fairly famous.”